Yora
Should be playing D&D instead
Browsing through the threads from recent months, one thing that was discussed briefly as being unappealing in (the common perception of) hexcrawling campaigns is the idea of GMs making shit up as they go because they don't want to bother with preparation.
I think the true value of random tables is not in generating new content, but in randomizing prepared content.
First thing: If we have to prepare content anyway, then why bother with randomizing it?
As I see it, what all RPGs really should be is a game in which the players take charge of the destiny of their characters. Things happen to the characters because the players made choices. The players have space to make decisions that have major impact on what's going to happen next, but they will also have to deal with things that don't fit into their plans, if they like it or not. This is a game after all, not collaborative story writing. Since the GM is in charge of the world, he can put anything in front of the PCs that he wants to at any time, and has the power to set up things in such ways that there's really only one thing the players can do in response to it, or that anything they do will lead to the same outcome. When that happens, players have no agency. It's railroading.
Agency is the entire point of this exercise, and players must be aware of the agency they have and genuinely feel that it is their choices that matter more than the whim of the GM. That is why GMs have to randomize at least some of the content they present to the players, and in my opinion should let the players see the randomization process.
When the party is marching through the wilderness, it's a completely difference experience when they encounter a kind and number of monsters the GM has selected, in a location that the GM has selected, at a time that the GM has selected, based on the exact knowledge of the current resources and condition of the PCs, compared to when the players run into a randomized group of monsters in a randomized location at a randomized point of time. If you get attacked by a bunch of ghouls that come out of the swamp water while you're all out of arrows, have only one healing potion, and the cleric is dead and this encounter was set up by the GM, it's easy to feel that the GM is deliberately kicking you while you are down. If that same encounter happpens as a result of random rolls, you're the only ones to blame for taking the path through this swamp and being on the move in your current conditions. Don't look at the GM, he didn't cause this.
To make this clear to the players, my approach to random encounters is to roll the random encounter check die in the open and explain to the players that an encounter will happen on a 1, regardless of whatever size of die I chose to be rolled to set the probability of an encounter. Even better, let one player roll the die. To really bring home the point that this encounter happens because of them and not of you.
The main point: If we randomize content, why do we have to make preparations?
What really is improvisation? Improvisation is finding a solution to a problem that is outside of the usual expected procedures of whatever task you're engaged in. But what people are the best at improvisation? It's the people who have a good understanding of what they are dealing with, who have a wide range of tools available to them, and who are skilled in a wide range of techniques. The best improvisation is not making up something completely new when you have nothing to work with. The best improvisation is applying the tools and skills that you have in a slightly different way than you usually do. It's very much not making shit up as you go. It's applying the tools that you came prepared with.
A random encounter table that simply lists "goblins" and "bandits" isn't really any useful for improvising great conent on the spot. But it can be useful if you have done preliminary work on what "goblin" and "bandit" specifically mean in this campaign you are currently running. The stat block for the monster in the book is just a bare bones skeleton. It's not yet a create with background, motivations, and typical behaviors. The entry of "goblins" on the encounter table for the Spider Woods can refer to a very different thing than the "goblins" entry on the encounter table in the Caverns of the Obsidian Wyrm, even though they have identical hit points, AC, damage, and saves. Doing some worldbuilding in advance on different goblin tribes in the region will go a long way in being prepared for when the party randomly encounters them. Instead of it being a group of random goblins that you have to flesh out on the spot (which you won't, so they will just be generic goblins again), you already know to at least some extend who these guys are and what they are like. That makes it much easier to give them personality and make the encounter memorable and different from other goblin encounters.
A different example of preparation is preparing wilderness lairs for random encounters in the wilderness. You roll a random encounter with 12 brigands who happen to try ambushing the party, but the players manage to defeat them without a single one getting away. Perhaps they get one alive and to talk or they follow the tracks of the brigands leading to the ambush site to find their camp. Now you need to roll up a brigand lair, which comes out as 127 brigands, six 2nd level fighters, three 4th level fighters, two 5th level fighters, one 9th level fighter, and a 10th level mage. You can roll this up pretty quickly (if you have stats for the higher level brigands prepared), but having the bandit camp simply be a big circle of tents in an open clearing would be quite boring. Especially when every brigand camp looks like that. Better preparation here means having a handful of maps for camps already ready to pull out. Have a small cave lair in a hillside, a large cave lair with wooden huts clustered along the walls, a circular pallisade with three guards towers, a ruined keep on top of a cliff, a cluster of tree houses with rope bridges between them, a small island on a lake, and whatever else you can think of. Not just as brigand camps, but also potentially goblin lairs, or gnoll lairs, or an elven hunting camp, or whatever group of randomly encountered creatures you need a lair for. You could use them as sites to encounter a pair of wyverns who are devouring the inhabitants of the camp they just killed, or a group of ghouls gnawing on the bones of warriors who lost a battle two weeks ago.
The best use for random tables is not to generate content, but to randomize content. They can help you to quickly put together elaborate encounters from previously compared components. And when the prep and improvisation is good, you can indeed generate a majority of content for a campaign. Because once a randomized encounter happens, it doesn't just have to have to end there and be done. You now can add new sites to the map that contribute to the greater tapestry that the players are exploring. If the players encounter three groups of goblins and wipe them out in the same area at different times, the players will expect there to be a lair somewhere nearby and they might want to try to find it. At that point, you don't say to yourself "they can search for as a long as they want, but they won't find anything because there is no lair". That's another point where you improvise and create a goblin lair in the area because of what has happened so far in the campaign, there really should be one. Doesn't need to be right away as the players don't need to find the lair now. If you want to make it a really cool goblin town, you can do that over the next week or two. In the meantime right now, you can let the players wander aimlessly through the forest by keeping them entertained with improvised content from your campaign's custom random tables.
I think the true value of random tables is not in generating new content, but in randomizing prepared content.
First thing: If we have to prepare content anyway, then why bother with randomizing it?
As I see it, what all RPGs really should be is a game in which the players take charge of the destiny of their characters. Things happen to the characters because the players made choices. The players have space to make decisions that have major impact on what's going to happen next, but they will also have to deal with things that don't fit into their plans, if they like it or not. This is a game after all, not collaborative story writing. Since the GM is in charge of the world, he can put anything in front of the PCs that he wants to at any time, and has the power to set up things in such ways that there's really only one thing the players can do in response to it, or that anything they do will lead to the same outcome. When that happens, players have no agency. It's railroading.
Agency is the entire point of this exercise, and players must be aware of the agency they have and genuinely feel that it is their choices that matter more than the whim of the GM. That is why GMs have to randomize at least some of the content they present to the players, and in my opinion should let the players see the randomization process.
When the party is marching through the wilderness, it's a completely difference experience when they encounter a kind and number of monsters the GM has selected, in a location that the GM has selected, at a time that the GM has selected, based on the exact knowledge of the current resources and condition of the PCs, compared to when the players run into a randomized group of monsters in a randomized location at a randomized point of time. If you get attacked by a bunch of ghouls that come out of the swamp water while you're all out of arrows, have only one healing potion, and the cleric is dead and this encounter was set up by the GM, it's easy to feel that the GM is deliberately kicking you while you are down. If that same encounter happpens as a result of random rolls, you're the only ones to blame for taking the path through this swamp and being on the move in your current conditions. Don't look at the GM, he didn't cause this.
To make this clear to the players, my approach to random encounters is to roll the random encounter check die in the open and explain to the players that an encounter will happen on a 1, regardless of whatever size of die I chose to be rolled to set the probability of an encounter. Even better, let one player roll the die. To really bring home the point that this encounter happens because of them and not of you.
The main point: If we randomize content, why do we have to make preparations?
What really is improvisation? Improvisation is finding a solution to a problem that is outside of the usual expected procedures of whatever task you're engaged in. But what people are the best at improvisation? It's the people who have a good understanding of what they are dealing with, who have a wide range of tools available to them, and who are skilled in a wide range of techniques. The best improvisation is not making up something completely new when you have nothing to work with. The best improvisation is applying the tools and skills that you have in a slightly different way than you usually do. It's very much not making shit up as you go. It's applying the tools that you came prepared with.
A random encounter table that simply lists "goblins" and "bandits" isn't really any useful for improvising great conent on the spot. But it can be useful if you have done preliminary work on what "goblin" and "bandit" specifically mean in this campaign you are currently running. The stat block for the monster in the book is just a bare bones skeleton. It's not yet a create with background, motivations, and typical behaviors. The entry of "goblins" on the encounter table for the Spider Woods can refer to a very different thing than the "goblins" entry on the encounter table in the Caverns of the Obsidian Wyrm, even though they have identical hit points, AC, damage, and saves. Doing some worldbuilding in advance on different goblin tribes in the region will go a long way in being prepared for when the party randomly encounters them. Instead of it being a group of random goblins that you have to flesh out on the spot (which you won't, so they will just be generic goblins again), you already know to at least some extend who these guys are and what they are like. That makes it much easier to give them personality and make the encounter memorable and different from other goblin encounters.
A different example of preparation is preparing wilderness lairs for random encounters in the wilderness. You roll a random encounter with 12 brigands who happen to try ambushing the party, but the players manage to defeat them without a single one getting away. Perhaps they get one alive and to talk or they follow the tracks of the brigands leading to the ambush site to find their camp. Now you need to roll up a brigand lair, which comes out as 127 brigands, six 2nd level fighters, three 4th level fighters, two 5th level fighters, one 9th level fighter, and a 10th level mage. You can roll this up pretty quickly (if you have stats for the higher level brigands prepared), but having the bandit camp simply be a big circle of tents in an open clearing would be quite boring. Especially when every brigand camp looks like that. Better preparation here means having a handful of maps for camps already ready to pull out. Have a small cave lair in a hillside, a large cave lair with wooden huts clustered along the walls, a circular pallisade with three guards towers, a ruined keep on top of a cliff, a cluster of tree houses with rope bridges between them, a small island on a lake, and whatever else you can think of. Not just as brigand camps, but also potentially goblin lairs, or gnoll lairs, or an elven hunting camp, or whatever group of randomly encountered creatures you need a lair for. You could use them as sites to encounter a pair of wyverns who are devouring the inhabitants of the camp they just killed, or a group of ghouls gnawing on the bones of warriors who lost a battle two weeks ago.
The best use for random tables is not to generate content, but to randomize content. They can help you to quickly put together elaborate encounters from previously compared components. And when the prep and improvisation is good, you can indeed generate a majority of content for a campaign. Because once a randomized encounter happens, it doesn't just have to have to end there and be done. You now can add new sites to the map that contribute to the greater tapestry that the players are exploring. If the players encounter three groups of goblins and wipe them out in the same area at different times, the players will expect there to be a lair somewhere nearby and they might want to try to find it. At that point, you don't say to yourself "they can search for as a long as they want, but they won't find anything because there is no lair". That's another point where you improvise and create a goblin lair in the area because of what has happened so far in the campaign, there really should be one. Doesn't need to be right away as the players don't need to find the lair now. If you want to make it a really cool goblin town, you can do that over the next week or two. In the meantime right now, you can let the players wander aimlessly through the forest by keeping them entertained with improvised content from your campaign's custom random tables.